Bleeding Cool

Bleeding Cool is an Internet news site, focusing on comics, TV, film, and games. Owned by Avatar Press, it was launched by Rich Johnston on 27 March 2009, and has gone through several iterations of design, and many forum changes. Avatar also publishes an associated magazine, Bleeding Cool.

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Bleeding Cool has a reputation within the industry for spreading previously secretive information far and wide. John Cunningham, VP Content Strategy at DC Entertainment, told DC All Access presenter Tiffany Smith on stage at San Diego Comic-Con, on whether she could reveal some information, "It was on Bleeding Cool this morning. The whole world knows."[2] In 2015 Marvel Senior Vice President of Publishing and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort referred to Bleeding Cool when talking about the revelation that Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac Perlmutter had personally intervened to cancel the Fantastic Four comics in his dispute with Fox Studios, saying "Seriously, if there wasn't a website stirring all of this stuff up, can you honestly say that you would even have noticed anything here?"[3]

Among Bleeding Cool's features are a power list detailing the most influential people in the comics industry.[4]

In 2012, Bleeding Cool was the first to report on sexual harassment accusations leveled against DC Comics editor Eddie Berganza, beginning with an incident at WonderCon in Anaheim, California. Though that initial article was a blind item that did not name the victim or accused, four years later, Bleeding Cool named Berganza when it accused him of sexual harassment, and detailed how he had risen in the ranks at DC even after the accusations became known to his employers. This was followed by a November 2017 BuzzFeed report on accusations leveled against Berganza by several women that led to his termination from DC.[5][6][7][8]

In November 2017, Bleeding Cool broke the story that writer/editor C.B. Cebulski, who had recently been promoted to Editor in Chief of Marvel Comics, had written a number of Japanese-themed stories for Marvel in 2003 and 2004 under the pseudonym Akira Yoshida, which led to accusations of cultural appropriation, yellowfacing, and "Orientalist profiteering".[9][10][11][12]

Bleeding Cool was nominated for the "Favourite Comics Related Website" Eagle Award in 2010[13] and 2011 and won in 2012. It was named as one of PC Magazine's top blogs of 2010[14] and Technorati gave it a perfect 1000 score for influence in the comics category in 2011.[15] Johnston was awarded the Shel Dorf Award for Best Comics Blogger for his work on Bleeding Cool in 2012.[16] He was also nominated in 2011[17] and 2013.[18]